Nail stop



March 18; 1952 n C. Eldreci, Jr?

, ZZZ/swim" Edi/vi Patented Mar. 18, 1952 NAIL STOP Edwin C. Eldred, Jr., Wenham, Mass., assignor to United Shoe Machinery Corporation, Flemington, N. J., a corporation of New Jersey Original application December 17, 1348, Serial No. 65,849. Divided and this application August 2, 1950, Serial No. 177,229

3 Claims. 1

This invention relates to stops for limiting movement of fastenings along ways of various types of machines and is illustrated as embodied in a nail stop for use in a nail distributor such as is disclosed in an application Serial No. 65,868, filed December 17, 1948 in the names of Wallace M. Cutler et al. The present application is a division of an application Serial No. 65,849, filed December 17, 1948 in my name and now Patent No. 2,575,336, granted November 20, 1951.

In nail distributors commonly used in the manufacture'of shoes and having a plurality of bar-shaped raceways down which nails are fed, it is customary to use all or only a few of said raceways in accordance with the type of work being operated upon. It is common practice to provide the bottom of a channel or groove of each of the raceways of such distributors with a hole in which a detent such, for example, as a small brad is inserted to stop progress of the nails down the raceway. The presence of the holes in the raceways is objectionable since dirt often accumulates in the holes and impedes the progress of the nails down the raceways, such holes being especially objectionable when nails which have heads are used since the heads of said nails, during their passage down the raceways drop into said holes, thus impeding or stopping progress of the nails down the raceways. Moreover, when the above-mentioned detents are used to close or render ineffective the various raceways it is necessary when changing nails in the distributor preparatory to operating upon this type of work, to clear; that is, to wipe from all the raceways the nails then resting upon the raceways.

It is an object of the present invention to provide improvedraceway stops for use in nail distributors. With the above object in view and in accordance with a feature of the invention the stop is adapted to be secured to a bar-shaped raceway of the distributor and has a portion which fits in a nail receiving groove of the raceway to prevent nails from traveling down said groove beyond the stop. The stop has a pair of flexible legs adapted to be sprung into binding position on the bar-shaped raceway, the portion of the stop which fits in the groove serving in accordance with another feature of the invention as a ramp to deflect out of the groove nails traveling down the groove.

The above the other features of the invention will be apparent after reading the following specification and claims in connection with the accompanying drawings which illustrate one embodiment of the invention selected-for purposes of illustration.

In the accompanying drawings,

Fig. 1 shows in perspective an illustration stop; and

Fig. 2 illustrates a portion of a nail distributor raceways of which are closed off by stops such as shown in Fig. 1.

The present invention is illustrated as embodied in a stop or clip 28 for rendering ineffective one or more raceways 22 of a nail distributor 24 which is fully disclosed in said application Serial No. 65,868 and which comprises a rotatable drum (not shown) from buckets of which nails or fastenings 26 are dumped onto upper portions of the raceways, said raceways being shown as being formed integral with a carrier 28 which is vibrated generally lengthwise of the raceways. The length and period of the vibration of the carrier 28 and accordingly the raceways 22 may be quickly andeffectively varied in accordance with the shape and/or the size of the nail being used by mechanism disclosed in detail in said application Serial No. 65,868.

The'raceways 22 may be described as having grooves or channels 30 between high sided upper portions 32 of which are arranged separator plates 34 secured in slots 36 of the carrier 28, said carrier preferably having fourteen raceways only four of which are shown. The channels or grooves 39 have the form of troughs along which nails travel lengthwise and which may be referred to as troughs. Nails 26 dropped from the drum fall at random onto the upper rear end of the carrier, many of the nails falling heads first to the right or to the left as viewed in Fig. 2 into the upper portions 32 of the grooves 39 which are inclined at approximately 4 degrees to the horizontal. As the carrier 28 upon which the nails 26 are mounted is vibrated the nails travel heads or pointed ends first down the raceways 22. The nails 26 which do not fall into the grooves 38 but lie transversely across the raceways as shown in Fig. 2 are flipped back onto the upper portions 32 of the raceways by a raceway clearer 38 and drop into the grooves 30 or fall through recesses 40 formed between the lower portions of the raceways and into a collector pan (not shown) which conveys said nails back into the bottom of the drum. The raceway clearer 38 comprises a plurality of prongs 42 secured to a bar 44 carried by a rock shaft 46, the construction and arrangement being such that the prongs are rocked clockwise slowly (Fig. 2) to cocked positions and after being released are rocked counterclockwise at high speed under spring action to flip the nails back onto the upper portion 32 of the grooves 30. As above explained, in operating on certain types of work on which fewer than fourteen nails are used one or more of the raceways 30 have heretofore been closed by detents fitting into holes formed in the bottoms of the grooves of the raceways, such practice being objectionable for reasons above explained. In order to close one or more of the raceways of the carrier 28 there is provided the metal stops or clips 20 each of which has flexible depending legs or sides 48 with flaring lower ends 50, said legs when forced onto one of the raceways 22 being adapted to be sprung into straddling relation over the raceway as shown in Fig. 1. The stop 20 has at its upper rear end a triangular-shaped ramp 52 which when the stop is sprung in binding relation upon one of the raceways fits in an associated groove 30 and is disposed at a slight angle to the lengthwise dimension of said groove thereby causing nails traveling down the raceways to be deflected out of the groove, the nails falling through recesses 40 between the lower portions of the raceways and back into the drum. The stop 23 has at its upper forward portion an upwardly extending handle 54 for facilitating the handling of the stop.

Having thus described my invention, what I claim as new and desire to secure by Letters Patent of the United States is:

l. A stop for use in a nail distributor which has raceways each provided with a groove along which nails travel, said stop comprising means for securing it to an associated raceway and having a ramp portion adapted to fit in the groove of the associated raceway and to deflect out of said groove nails traveling down the groove.

2. A stop for use in a nail distributor which has bar-shaped raceways each provided with a groove along which nails travel, said stop having a pair of spaced flexible legs constructed and arranged to be sprung into a binding position on an associated bar-shaped raceway, and having a ramp portion which fits in the groove of the raceway and deflects out of said groove nails traveling down the groove.

3. A stop for use in a nail distributor which has raceways each provided with an inclined trough down which nails travel lengthwise, said stop comprising means for securing it to an associated raceway and having a ramp portion adapted to fit in the trough of the associated raceway and to deflect out of said trough nails traveling lengthwise down said trough.

EDWIN C. ELDRED, JR.

REFERENCES CITED The following references are of record in the file of this patent:

UNITED STATES PATENTS Number Name Date 145,818 Smith Dec. 23. 1873 2,040,747 Koren May 12, 1936 

